


The Uncovered

by iriswesttt



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-26
Updated: 2016-06-18
Packaged: 2018-05-23 06:46:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 20,149
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6108444
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iriswesttt/pseuds/iriswesttt
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is basically an Iris-is-a-bad-ass-journalist story, since the show keeps dangling it in front of us but never properly and fully and continuously delivered it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Iris snuggled into her grey wool overcoat, jumping into the street, away from what looked like a puke puddle on the side walk, making sure her extremely expensive black leather boots remained in its pristine condition. It was exceptionally cold for a September day, and the wind blowing like it did before a summer storm, turning the skies completely grey in a matter of minutes were the icing on the cake of bizarro weather, specially after a sunny warm forecast the previous day.

To make matters worse Iris hadn’t had her coffee yet, which alongside the oxidised smell of blood in the crime scene, was giving her a migraine. And to top it all off she was having trouble to get to Eddie without transposing into the scene, something she was refraining from because it would definitively not make him very happy. She circulated the marked area one more time till she got close enough to make it impossible for him to ignore her shouting; 

“Hi, detective Thawne, I was hoping I could ask you some questions.”

Eddie looked at her, taking one deep breath before rolling his eyes and approached her, answering;

“We are not allowed to give any information about ongoing investigations, Miss West, I’m sure I have told such in the past. You’ll have to wait for the PR announcement like the other reporters.” 

Iris studied the crew accompanying Eddie. His partner, Patty Spivot, who had time and again made sure that how she felt about Iris was crystal clear, was very probably out of ear shot, but Iris dropped her voice to almost a whisper anyway as she probed Eddie;  

“Yes, I know that, I was thinking maybe you could let me know, off the record of course, if these deaths have some relation with the murder that happened on the subway last week.”

It was a long shot. He probably hadn’t thought about that, Iris couldn’t explain why she was getting the feeling they were related herself, other than the proximity to the station there was nothing substantial to cause such conclusions, so as expected Eddie offered her a quizzical face before saying;

“What? How—? Iris, that was a suicide.”

She knew he wasn’t the detective designated for the subway case, but just the day before she got the dead girl’s girlfriend, Gabrielle Treccani, at her desk at CCPN, on the Uncovered room, crying about how the police wouldn’t listen to her that Casey’s death’s couldn’t have been suicide and showing her the text Casey had send her minutes before she supposedly jumped on the subway line. A text saying how excited she was about flying with Gabrielle to Atlantis for their weekend off. 

Scott had told Gabrielle the Uncovered would look into it but they were after a corruption story at the moment and one dead girl wasn’t enough of a case for them. The thing kept on nagging Iris though, so when she turned her TV this morning to the news of two deaths close to the same subway station Casey Darren had been killed Iris texted Linda she would be late and headed for the scene, praying Eddie was the detective there and thanking her lucky stars at the sight of him. Not that he was actually being much help right about now.

The Uncovered was a department at Picture News that dealt with investigative cases. That was the reason Iris had gotten into journalism in the first place. They were a team of four reporters, her, Linda Park, Scott Evans and Mason Bridge, who would usually work on one or two stories together, always investigative stories (organised crime, public corruption and stuff like that were Mason’s favourites and they were mostly a democracy but he was the one with the last word whenever necessary). They worked on them for months, sometimes a whole year and in the end of the investigation, once they had the full story, they would do an expose piece that would always get the Sunday cover, (which made the rest of the reporters weary, saying between whispers how unjust it was that they would write so little and always end up with the spotlights on them), and that piece would usually get a couple of months of followups after published, at the end of which they could move on to the next story.

Scott was the reason Iris got the job. They went to college together at CCU, and they’d dated for a few years back then, after meeting each other at the journalism course Iris had picked as her sociology requirement on her freshman year. They somehow managed to remain good friends after the break up and Scott, who was the journalism major out of the two of them, graduated and got a job at the CCPN. He had fallen into Mason’s graces pretty quickly, and after Iris helped the two of them and Linda, unofficially, with the first Uncovered investigation (they had needed a psychologist for that particular case), Mason offered her the job, which she took gladly. It was infinitely better than waitering tables at the Jitters to pay for her post grad tuition, even when considered all the free coffee she could possibly drink.

Right at this moment persuade Eddie to help her was proving to be a much more difficult task than it had been in the past. But who knew, maybe the crazy feeling she was getting that this crime and Casey’s murder were related somehow would be proven right. She had had more unbelievable hunches in the past so she had learn to trust her intuition even when it seemed just wishful thinking;         

“Eddie, I’ve got some information —”

“Information you’re willing to submit as evidence?”, he interrupted her. Like he didn’t know how she rolled by now;

“No, because CCPD has a habit of accepting what I have to give without granting me the same courtesy. Not very nice if you ask me”. He didn’t need to know Gabrielle had tried the police first. Not right at this very moment anyway.  
“Then I don’t wanna know.”

He turned around, leaving her cursing the policemen as a species. She decided to change strategies, trying in the nicest tone she could convey; 

“Eddie! Please!”

He walked back to her, standing uncomfortably close, only separated by the “do not cross” crime scene sign and said in a lower tone;

“Look, after last time, after you guys published that story I had already gotten the promotion but I got into serious trouble for giving you information, classified information that was made very public by you and the _uncovers_. The captain threatened to take my badge, Iris, it wasn’t fun, ok? I can’t help you anymore.”

Eddie was usually nice but as most guys he was always taking credit for things he didn’t exactly do and she was not in the mood to be tested. Not with the migraine she had waiting on her way; 

“ _I_  helped you! Are you seriously telling me you would have solved that case without the Uncovered?”

“I’m on probation, Iris. I can’t work with you anymore or they’ll very likely fire me —” 

But Iris had stopped listening. As she swept the scene one more time her eyes focused on the guy kneeling beside one of the covered corpses. 

She felt all the air being knocked out of her lungs and she couldn’t pin point what in the sight of him gave her goosebumps. Even kneeling she could tell he was really tall and his glasses, sliding down to the tip of his nose, gave him an awkward charm. He was… pretty. She could tell he had long eyelashes even through the frame of his glasses, and there was something about the way he tried pushing them up with the back of his gloved hands. She actually caught herself smiling at it.

Eddie seemed to noticed Iris’ lack of attention, stopping in the middle of a sentence she hadn’t heard and questioning her; “What?”

“Who is that?”

“Barry Allen. He’s our new CSI, why?”

She broke her gaze away to look back at Eddie and gave herself another question. Just one more.

“How new?”

“A week or so. Why?”

He looked suspicious. She really didn’t feel like sharing the next piece of information with anyone but it was out of her lips before she could think it through;

“I thought I knew him from somewhere.”

Thankfully Eddie wasn’t someone to dwell over her cues too much, he seemed glad to be able to change the subject and have a more pleasant conversation, over a safe topic, with her, so he fed her information without her needing to probe it out of him;

“Unless you spend some time in Coast City, not very likely. He’s a transfer.”

“Coast City?”

She looked back at the new CSI. Allen. There was nothing unexpected about him, it was like she could have predicted him somehow. It wasn’t exactly like she had seen him before, it was an indescribable familiarity. Rationally she knew they haven’t met but somehow…  

“Yeah, Coast City. What’s with you?”

She scold her face the best she could and diverged her eyes from Barry before answering Eddie; 

“I don’t know, I’ve got the weirdest feeling”, she shook herself out of it and looking Eddie in the eye she tried one last time; “Please, change your mind and call me.”

She needed something to convince the rest of her team to go for this investigation. She needed them to go for it. The corruption piece was too slow and it was boring her out of her mind lately and the second Gabrielle had shown her that text she tingled. Eddie reached for her arm but she didn’t notice till he was already touching her. The CSI was looking directly at her, bright green eyes and she was right, those were some really long eyelashes, and Iris was suddenly frozen in place, by his gaze rather than Eddie’s hand.

“Iris, I’m very grateful, you know I am, but I can’t do another investigation the same way or there won’t be an investigation for me anymore.” 

“Fine.” She answered him, perhaps more rude than strictly necessary, and turned her back at him. 

Maybe she would get lucky at the subway administration and she would be able to flirt her way into the security cameras recording of the scene.

“You should get some coffee.” Eddie shouted at her leaving. She hated he could tell she wasn’t caffeinated yet, so that caused her to turn around and offer him both of her middle fingers, which he laughed at. She wasn’t beneath flirting him into this either, if that was what it would take.

 

If any one wants to read it on my tumblr: [here it is](http://iriswestthings.tumblr.com/post/140001266142/the-uncovered)


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for the everyone who comment on the first chapter! I hope you guys like where I'm taking the story.

As it turned out Casey Darren conveniently jumped at the subway line on one of the five blind spots of the station’s security cameras. That on itself would be enough reason for suspicion, but adding that to the fact that every PR of the CCPD was avoiding answering Iris who was the detective responsible for the case, giving her the protocol “that is no longer an ongoing investigation and the department already divulged all the information allowed to be made public” answer, was leaving her weary.

Iris entered the precinct holding four cups of coffee and a cronut, and as appealing as the pastry looked right about now it wasn’t for her. She dropped at Eddie’s desk and left the cronut and one of the cups there for him, hoping he would be back before it went cold and that he would appreciate the gesture and the little wink-y face she had drawn on it. And that he would call her, granting her access to the investigations files she so desperately needed. Ok, that last part was pretty much the wildest dreams she could possibly have about now, but it was nice to dream it anyway.

Then she headed to Sophia’s desk like someone on a mission. She placed the coffee slightly out of reach and said in her fail proof nice-girl-voice;  

“Hi, Sophia.”

Sophia Benson was the receptionist at CCPD. She worked at the precinct there was more than 25 years, which meant she knew Iris since pretty much she was born, before her mom convinced her dad they should move out of Central City, transferring to Keystone City. Sophia also knew pretty much all there was to know about everyone and every on going investigation on the precinct, and she liked Iris, and even though she also liked to pretend she wouldn’t give her any information, all it ever took was a cup of coffee.

“No”, she told Iris harshly, before turning her chair away from her and from the coffee.

“But you haven’t even listened to me yet”, Sophia rolled her eyes at it, never actually looking away from the computer screen and Iris tried; “by the way, you look lovely today. Is that a new lipstick? I’m looking for a good shade of red myself.”

She finally faced Iris, with an amused smile as she informed her she could see Iris was wearing a red lipstick as well, and Iris laughed at it as Sophia answered the ringing phone;  

“CCPD, how may I help you? Please hold.”

When she was done transferring the call Iris dangled the cup in front of her, carefully avoiding spilling the drink and said, in a sing song voice; 

“Remember how much you like when I bring you coffee? I brought you coffee.”

“Do you honestly think I’m that easily bribable?”

She reached for it causing Iris to move it further away and Sophia asked her, in a bored tone;

“What do you want?”

“I want to know who is the detective on Casey Darren’s case. For some reason PR is reluctant to offer me that little piece of information.”

“You’re out of luck, West.”

And the way she said it Iris knew;

“Brown?”

“Brown. CCPD, how may I help you? No, that’s not the hot line. I’ll transfer you.”

Iris inclined over Sophia’s desk and inquired in a whisper;

“Any smart friendly handsome officer working with Brown then?”

“They are all afraid of you. Or of Brown, or of you and Brown.”

“But I’m so nice!” she said, making Sophia chortle before Iris continued; “The CSI then? Please tell me it was Snow.”

“Nope, it was the new boy”, she pointed her head towards the stair and Iris followed it with her eyes, seeing Barry Allen walking down the steps, causing the same reaction out of her he did on the scene and before Iris could decide against it;  

“ _Hey, Allen, come here_ ”, Sophia called him, then turning to Iris again she asked; “Have you met him yet?”

Iris managed to shake her head with a weak;

“No.”

“Please try not to tear him apart. He’s too skinny. I get a feeling a wind could knock him out, he’s definitively not ready for you.”

“But I’m so nice.”, she repeated wearing the best innocent face she could convey. 

Iris didn’t turn to look at Barry again though, praying that for once in her life Sophia failed to see through her. Through what exactly Iris wasn’t completely sure, but she succeed in controlling the urge to just stand there and watch him freely: the way he came to an abrupt stop by her side, the way his hands jump to the nape of his neck, the way he fixed his glasses back into place, differently now his hands were free of the blue gloves. Observing all of it by the corner of her eyes. His, though, were set on her, she could feel them making her warm even if she kept her focus on Sophia, until she officially introduced them;   

“Barry Allen, this is Iris West. You shouldn’t answer any of her questions. Where’s my coffee now?”

Sophia asked, her hand extended on Iris direction, waiting for her payment, and after complying Iris finally turned to face Barry Allen, offering a small, tentative, smile. Good god his eyes were green. He never smiled back though, his lips slightly parted as he fluttered his lids at her and Iris offered;

“I have an extra coffee, I though you might like that since the coffee here is criminal.”

He reached for the cup without really answering to it, instead he said;

“You were at the scene.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Earlier today, you were at the scene. I saw you there. The double homicide close to the subway station on 8th avenue.”

So he was watching her back there too. Usually he wasn’t the kind of guy she would find cute. The messy hair and the unmatched and layers of clothes that didn’t properly fit him. But he smelled good, like peppermint or something herbal and a little wooden-y, and when she looked down she saw his shoes, a navy blue wing tip, that alongside the golden frames of his glasses made her think that perhaps his fashion senses weren’t completely lost, just in need of a little push. 

“Oh, yeah, I was.”

“Yeah”, he echoed her, growing quiet again. She brushed her hair behind her ears. She couldn’t describe exactly what was making her unsettled. It wasn’t that he made her feel inadequate, it was more like it was imperative for her to stand still, waiting for something, and that was taking a lot of self control even though she didn’t know what she was controlling.  

As she didn’t respond to it he shook his head and added;  

“Sorry, I just — I feel like I know you from somewhere.”

Her stomach did a somersault at that. If it were someone else telling her that she would have rolled her eyes and dimmed it as a cheap pick up line but wasn’t that exactly the impression she got on scene? He seemingly read her mind adding in a haste;

“Oh, that sounded like I was hitting on you — I wasn’t hitting on you — I just, I know I don’t know you — It’s only a… — I’m sorry.”

He did look like a rambler, so that was proof if Iris needed any. Sophia shook her head, in amusement more than disapproval, and asked the two of them;

“Ok, would you mind moving this further away from my desk? I wish no part of it.”

“Right, sorry, I — right”, Barry said, following Iris towards the bottom of the stairs, where she stopped, turning to face him again;

“I’m a journalist, at CCPN.”

He raised his brows in a weirdly dreamily manner and with a little smile he said;

“Oh, so that’s why I shouldn’t answer any of your questions.”

“I was kinda hoping you would anyway”, she tried with a grin.

That was when Captain Singh walked by them and intervened in a tired voice.

“Iris! Not the new guy, please!”

She diverged her focus from Barry to answer him;

“Hi, Captain, my captain!”

“Why couldn’t you have stayed a little girl? You were so cute back then.”

Singh had been her dad’s partner before he transferred, back when they were both detectives. He was one of the people on the department that knew Iris her whole life, and she had a sneaky suspicion that was the only reason she hadn’t been blocked at the door as of it yet.

“My dad sends his regards.”

“Can’t you go harass CSIs at his precinct instead then?”

He was already half way to his office and Iris added loudly;

“There’s such thing called press freedom, Captain. The police should really learn about that. I can offer a seminar if you’re interest.”

Singh pointed to Barry and said;  

“Don’t get sucked in, Allen.”

Barry was beaming at her, watching the exchange like it was entertaining so she told him;

“I think the price over my head is higher than over most criminals’ around here. Anyway, uh — Sophia told me you were the CSI at the subway scene. Casey Darren’s suicide.”

His expression dropped at that and he fixed his glasses, already in place, just for the sake of it.

“Yeah, are you writing about that?”

“Not exactly —”

She was weighting on how much she should share with him, on how she should inquire things out of him when Spivot passed them, staring suspiciously at Iris, who offered her a manic smile, and Iris was about to suggest going somewhere else, somewhere they wouldn’t have people interrupting every five seconds when Barry beat her to it;  

“I’m on my lunch break right now, maybe we should…”, he said, gesturing towards the entrance door.

“Yeah, that sounds good.”

 

Iris suggested the Jitters and he followed her willingly to it, saying he didn’t know of any good places to have lunch around the precinct, telling her he had been eating on the food truck parked in front of CCPD and even though it wasn’t the worse food truck around Iris took pit and promised him a list of cheap-but-good places for lunch. It was only when they were waiting in line that he brought the subject up again;

“So, about the Darren’s case?”

“Right. Well… Do you think it’s at all possible that wasn’t a suicide?”

He offered her a questioningly expression and asked in a rush;

“How did you know?”

That was so much easier than she thought it would be.

“So you do?”

“Look, I can’t loose my job…”

“Yeah, absolutely. I know they joke around the precinct but I would never… This is off the record.”

But it was their turn to order and whatever he was going to tell her he had time to go over it and edit on his head, for it was only once they were sited, with their lunch in front of them, that he started;

“Ok. Well, at the scene there wasn’t enough evidence to conclude anything, but there were no signs of struggle on her body, the cause of death was electrocution from the line and the train managed to stop before actually hitting her. But the security camera’s, I mean, she was at a blind spot, which is very weird on itself.”

“I thought that too”, Iris nodded.

He looked up from his grilled cheese in surprise;

“You’ve seen the recording?”

“Well, I can flirt my way through the subway security offices.”

He beamed at her again, asking;

“Is there somewhere you can’t flirt your way into?”

She smiled down at her sandwich.

“So, anything besides the security cameras?”

He fidgeted in his sit and considered it for a couple of seconds before compiling;

“Yeah, when her lab report came back from the morgue — she had taken her vitamins that morning.”

“What?”

“They weren’t fully digested yet. I mean, you don’t take your vitamins if you are planing on killing yourself.”

She liked his thought process.

“No, you don’t. So why is the police ruling it as suicide?”

He took a deep breath and the rest of it came out in a rushed whisper, like it was a confession;

“I told Brown. I said I thought it was homicide, I mean, there’s at least evidence enough to further investigation but he said there isn’t, that the evidence we have point to suicide, I mean, we got an eye wittiness that said she jumped and no one came forward to anything else and the station was packed that day so he said somebody would have said something. I thought about going to the Captain but this was my first case, I didn’t want to start causing problems but I’ve got a stomach ache for a week now because of it.”

“Casey’s girlfriend came looking for us”, she told him; “the Uncovered I mean — She said Casey wouldn’t have killed herself, which sounds like every family of a suicide victim ever but I’m thinking she was right.”

“So you’ll write about it?”

“That’s not how we do it. We only publish something after we have substantial investigation and I haven’t even convinced the rest of the team to go after the story yet, I just — I — I’m investigating it. Regardless.”

He nodded earnestly, gravely, and told her, reaching for her hand;

“I wanna help you.”

So he would be easy. Way better than dealing with Eddie who was constantly hunted by the risk of someone finding out (so what if they had? he got his promotion from officer to detective anyway, and it was at least partially because of her), or with the other CSIs, always reluctant of giving her any information. 

She watched his hand on hers until her phone started ringing by its side and he jumped out of the touch like he had been shocked by it.

She turned it off. It was Linda, she knew what it was about. Iris hadn’t been to the paper yet and they would all be pissed she hadn’t been to the court house after the documents they needed either.

“I have to go”, she said; “I haven’t been to the news’ room all day today.”

Barry nodded again, a little shyly this time. She had some investigating about Casey’s life to do. Why would someone want her dead? Gabrielle wasn’t able, or willing, to answer that. She was about to get on her feet when she decided he seemed to be the person to ask this; 

“Do you think that today’s scene could have any relation to Casey’s?”

“Why?”

She inhaled. She had had everyone, from Mason to Eddie, from Linda to Wally mocking her about her intuition, but she tried anyway; 

“I’ve got the weirdest feeling about it. But that’s all that is.”

To her surprise Barry offered;

“I’ll look into it.”

And it was her turn to nod at him with a content smile.

 

[Read it on my tumblr](http://iriswestthings.tumblr.com/post/140154857022/the-uncovered)


	3. Chapter 3

It took about three cases on the Uncovered for Iris to figured out that if you would walk somewhere like you belong there it called less attention than being polite and asking for information, so Iris walked into Hayward & Crawford, the law firm Casey Darren used to work, around 12:30 simply nodding to the receptionist. What she needed now was to find the other legal secretary who according to Darren’s facebook page was her friend. It took a stroll around the fifth floor of the office building where Hayward & Crawford was located for Iris to find Ella Green’s desk, which she approached;

“Hi, I’m with the CCPN and I’m wondering if I could ask some questions about Casey Darren.”

Ella’s professional smile died on her lips as she answered;

“The firm already released a public statement, from beyond that we’re respecting the family of a dear employee.”

Iris noticed Ella avoiding her eyes as she said that in a monotone that didn’t match the sorrow in her expression. Maybe they were actually friends. Gabrielle didn’t seem to like Ella very much, saying Casey wasn’t all that close to anyone at work, and it didn’t help that Darren was very private about posting anything on social media, but Iris had reached the limit talking to Gabrielle, she knew of nothing helpful and she promised that Casey wouldn’t have confined in anyone at work but Iris was getting the sneaky suspicion that might be jealousy.

“I’ve got Casey’s girlfriend telling me she didn’t kill herself and I’m thinking if her personal life wasn’t what drove her to it then perhaps her professional one is what did.”

“Hayward & Crawford is respecting miss Darren’s memory”, then she dropped her tone and finished; “and I’ll go down for a bagel in fifteen minutes. There’s a truck that parks on the other side of the street, it’s very good, I recommend it.”

So Iris would get Ella Green to talk.

She didn’t even had to wait the full fifteen minutes like she was expecting to, to spot Ella’s bright red hair the other side of the street.

“Ella!”

Ella hugged herself into her trench coat;

“Gabrielle reached out for you?”

And after Iris nodded she started;

“Look, the firm wants to distance itself from any possible scandal this could bring, you can’t quote me on any of this or I’ll loose my job. So, off the record, but there’s nothing that would convince me that Casey killed herself. Not with Gabrielle and not with work.” 

She lighted a cigaret, taking a long drag and turning away from Iris to blow her smoke before she continued; 

“What can I say? She’s happy with the jealous bitch and albeit a bitch, they really love each other. And Casey wanted to be a paralegal and Luis, you know, Hayward, he knew that and he started giving her document analyses to do, asking her help in a big merger case we are dealing with now. She was excited, talking about going back to law school.”

Iris studied Ella. Her eyes turned to the right as she talked and despite being clearly nervous she didn’t strike Iris as a lier, so she just asked “ _back?”_ to keep Ella talking.

“Yeah, we met on college, we were both pre-law, but you know, students loans can be overwhelming so we both decided to take a break before going to law school. Casey was actually the one to get me the job here.” Ella took another drag and looked back at Iris; “I bet Gabrielle told you we weren’t really that close.”

“Yeah, she did.”

“Yeah, well, she was my best friend, but Gabrielle doesn’t like me much, which, you know, whatever, they were really in love and shit, but Casey is my friend. Well, was my friend, and no one can take that away from me.”

Iris briefly considered the possibility of Ella being in love with Casey, but it was seeming more likely that Gabrielle was really a jealous bitch, as Ella would put it. She was the one down playing Ella’s place in Casey’s life and not the other way around. But it seemed like Ella was really the right person to inquire about Casey’s life, she had access to both sides of it.

“Anything Casey could have discovered about a case that would make someone wish her dead?”

Ella shook her head in surprise.

“No, look, we deal with legal stuff for big corporations”, she threw her cigaret on the sidewalk, stepping on it; “or you know, rich yacht owners complaining about too much noise coming from the neighbour yacht and other similarly stuck up rich people. 99% of our cases are resolved in settlements, there’s no conspiracy, it’s only boring legal stuff”, she stopped, like she was considering something and then added; “besides she would have told me.”

Iris nodded, figuring it was time to stop pushing. Ella had to know she trusted her opinion so she could in turn trust Iris.

“Thank you, Ella. Please call me if you find anything weird,” she said, giving her a card. 

“Holy shit! This is an Uncovered story?”

“It’s no story as of it yet. If you could also, please, avoid telling people we’re looking into it…”

“Yeah, don’t worry.” 

And as Iris was just leaving Ella added;

“You know, Casey really admired you guys. I’m glad Gabrielle managed to talk to you.”

Now it was about convincing the rest of them they should pursue it. Iris couldn’t really see this whole thing being an accident and even though Barry hadn’t called her with any new information about any of the investigations since the day before, when he had offered his help, she was thinking that Casey knowing something that someone didn’t want her to know was looking more and more likely the reason she ended up on that train line. 

 

* * *

 

 

The thing about Iris West, Barry had concluded only three days after meeting her, was that she cared. She cared about the investigation for beyond the story, she cared about Casey Darren’s memory and about her girlfriend’s piece of mind, she cared about justice and fairness from beyond the failed justice system, and if you were lucky enough she would care about you. Barry had a sneaky suspicion he was lucky enough as Iris walked into his lab, the second day in a row, holding two cups of coffee in her hands at 9 o’clock that morning.

She was wearing her hair up in a pony tail and her grey overcoat, paired with a soft pink dress that showed her bra straps and Barry needed a deep breath to control the swooping of his stomach. He couldn’t control the smile though;

“You know, I might get spoiled with all this special coffee deliver treatment.”

Iris smiled back, all genuine and shiny as she told him;

“As long as we keep you humble and grateful.”

She winked at him and he wasn’t completely sure if the total dorky way she bended her head while doing it was on purpose or not but he laughed at it anyway. 

Here was the other thing about Iris West: she was absolutely the most beautiful person he had ever met. And every time he wasn’t looking at her he was filled with the conviction that he was imagining it, no one could possibly carry that much shine and grace, and then he would look at her and realise that any tricks his memories were playing were the other way around. Her smile was impossible. So was the feeling it surged out of him every time he was engulfed by the notion that Iris West was smiling at him, because of him.

When he saw her for the first time, at the crime scene that day, her bright blue dress and her grey wool over coat and her hair falling down her back she seemed completely out of place of the dirty street and the sunless day. Now, even though she didn’t, he wished she belong in his lab, by his side.

It was mostly easy to work with her. It had been a relief to have someone to share his theories with and talk freely about Darren’s case. He had spend the two previous days deciding his attention between going over Darren’s files and looking into the two dead guys from the scene close to the subway station as per Iris’ request. 

They were both drug dealers with previous arrests and it looked like that Eddie’s theory that they had been killed each over a gangue dispute of territory stood. The ballistics report showed that the bullets were from the two guns, find on scene and that the distance from the shots matched the distance from where the bodies were found. Barry couldn’t conclude any relation to Darren’s case besides the whole close-to-the-subway-station thing though. 

He had promised Iris she could take a look into the files, maybe a different set of eyes would find what he was missing, before he archived it back to its rightful place, hopefully before any one would notice them missing, which was what she was doing at his lab at the moment.

“The only thing I found weird was that they were both represented by the same layer, I haven’t looked into her or anything, but she is from one of those fancy law firms, here: Laura M. Smith from Abbott & Bates”, he told her.

“Barry!” her hand jumped to his arm, holding it tight.

“What?”

“She doesn’t work for Abbott & Bates anymore.”

“What?”, he shook his head, trying to concentrate in what she was saying rather than her sweet flowery perfume or the fact she was standing so close he could feel the warmth irradiating from her body; “How do you know that?”

“I walked by L. M. Smith’s office when I went to Hayward & Crawford yesterday”, she said without looking at him, her eyes fixed on the piece of paper in front of them.

“You mean the firm Darren worked as a legal secretary?”

“Yep”, she nodded, her eyes finally meeting his, overwhelming him with a very inappropriate urge to kiss her. Completely ridiculous considering the subject they were discussing. And the fact she had shown no signs of liking him. She was very likely not even single anyway.

“So there’s your connection”, he managed.

“Yep”, she repeated.

He looked back to the file. She was right. How in the hell could she had been right? 

“So you were right. I mean. Holy shit.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always I really appreciate if you guys let me know how you are liking the story. Once again thanks for all the support!


	4. Chapter 4

The connection between Casey’s death and the subway shooting had peaked the rest of the Uncovered interest in the (potential, as Scott kept on insisting) story and they had decided that Linda and Scott would keep on digging the corruption case while Iris and Mason tried to shape out whatever the case was turning out to be;

“How’s L. M. Smith coming?”, Linda asked her.

“She’s still refusing to sit with me. Barry promised to sneak me into the files’ room at CCPD, we’ll see if I can find other cases she represented and I’ll go down the court house tomorrow, dig on the public records there…”

“I can try another strategy with her”, Scott offered; “pretend like I need a lawyer or something, see if there’s anything I can find.”

“No, no, no”, Mason interfered; “you are on the senator’s case, if it comes to it I’ll go down there and talk to miss Smith myself”, the turning to Iris he added; “you keep on digging on her and we’ll decide about that once you have more info, right now I have to go buy drugs, kids”, he concluded, getting a laugh out of the rest of them.

Laura Smith’s resistance was leaving Iris weary though. If she could just figure out what it was that Casey had find out, what on earth could be so bad that she needed to be killed for it. She hadn't had much luck with Ella, who was terminant in her refusal to allow Iris into their files room. So she would take what she could get, Iris pondered as she approached Barry’s lab’s door to see him with his nose stuck on a microscope completely oblivious to the rest of the world and she envied him for a second. Sometimes she wished she could turn it off, see those cases through magnifying lenses and no through the cold truth of human depravity. Analyse cells for a while and stop thinking about organised crime and 23 year old murdered girls.

She was in no such luck though, but Barry’s smile when he saw her almost compensated it, it was most certainly a pretty and welcome distraction, as it was the smell of his aftershave heightened by their close distance as he swiped the key card to open the file room. It wouldn't last long though: they both turned away from the smell of naphthalene and mould that reached them from the windowless room. The ventilation started to run making a soft humming noise and Barry offered her a sheepish smile, saying;

“Ok, you have the password to the computer but like I said most of the stuff is not digitalised. Everything is in chronological order, yesterday starts here then it goes backwards. Sophia should come around 5:00 to archive today’s stuff but I’ll be back at 4:00, if you need anything else give me a call.”

“I don’t think there’s cellphone service in here.”

“Well, then you scream and I’ll come running. Try to keep on breathing.”

She offered him an unimpressed face in return but after three hours alone on that claustrophobic room it was actually proving to be a bigger challenge than she thought it would. So when Barry showed up again, holding a cup of coffee and smelling like his fresh clean self she let out a sigh of relief.

“What I don’t get”, Iris told him after having showed all the files she could find with _Laura Smith_ , _Laura M. Smith_ and _L. M. Smith_ on it; “is why a lawyer at a fancy firm accepts this many pro bono cases of petty criminals and small dealers.”

“I don’t think she’s actually working pro bono.” Barry imputed, and Iris smiled at how her sarcasm got lost on him.

“What I mean is how on earth am I gonna find out who is paying for it.”

“Maybe somebody at her former firm —”, but Iris interrupted him with a silent _shhh_. The sound of the door opening across the room (across all the cabinets of files that thankfully shield them from this person line of vision) stalled her. Iris frantically hid the files she had out on the open on the closest drawer she could find, jumping on the desk herself and pulling a very confused Barry to her, as she took her shoes off with her feet she messed Barry’s hair and unbuttoned from the first to the third button of his shirt, smashing their lips together around the same time she could hear the steps of a tall female figure reaching them.

Barry must have figured out her plan half way through it, placing her legs around his hips, her feet resting on his butt, and kissing her back for real, and his hands on the small of her back kept her close to him as he left out a convincing moan, muffled by his lips on hers and Iris resisted the urge of licking and sucking and slipping her tongue coursing through her. Not very professional.

“What the hell?”

And of course it was Patty Spivot. Iris could recognise her voice through her own heavy breathing. Barry pulled back a little, smiling wicked at Iris, blushing through the roots of his hair and for a second it felt real somehow. Probably the adrenaline and the satisfaction that her rushed unplanned plan had somehow worked but Iris couldn’t help the giggle as Barry turned to Patty, offering a cheeky;

“Hi, detective Spivot, hi.” 

“You’ve gotta be kidding me”, Patty uttered, a disgusted tone in her voice; “do you want to get fired, Barry?”

Iris jumped out of the desk at that, trying to persuade Patty to stay quiet, saying it was all her fault for her to please not tell on them. 

“Oh, I know it’s your fault. You should be warn”, she told Barry; “she would kiss anyone for information.”

As Iris swallowed the response she would like to give, focusing on the risks that immediate satisfaction could bring, Barry grabbed her her shoes and put himself between her and Patty;

“Don’t worry, I’m a big boy, I can handle myself”, he told Patty as he held Iris by the hand, pulling her after him and Patty’s disappointed face was almost worth it. Barry’s proud smile was what actually made it worth it, but Iris couldn't dwell much on it, all her energy going towards keeping a neutral face. 

 

* * *

 

He couldn’t exactly read Iris’ face as they walked back into his lab. She was guarded, in a way he hadn’t seen her before. Not towards him anyway.

“I’m really sorry about all of that”, she apologised. He couldn’t exactly say he hadn’t minded, that he had liked it, that he could still feel her lips tingling on his, that he wanted to kiss her again, for real this time, so he just offered;

“It’s ok. At least you’ve got a bunch of names that might lead to something now.”

Iris brushed her hair behind her ears and she seemed shy all the sudden, facing the ground, avoiding his eyes and then hers fell on his desk, where he had the files from the shooting and from Darren’s case open, he had been obsessingly analysing it in any and all free moments he would get;

“You shouldn’t leave this stuff just lying around”, she advised him.

Barry took a step closer to her and considered taking her hands in his before deciding that would be too much of a bold move. Standing there, close enough to smell her sweet shampoo and her flowery and warm perfume it was difficult not to though, especially when he would remember her small hands on the back of his neck, holding him close, her nails on his scalp, and the taste of her lips, she wasn’t wearing lipstick today but they were sweet too, probably something honey like, or maybe it was orange, he couldn’t really tell and he was fixating so much on it that he was probably already remembering it all wrong. Damn the human brain with it’s failed memory system. If there was ever something he wanted to perfectly remember was the way if felt, her lips on his neck, her forehead on his and her warmth close to him.

Barry shook himself out of it, but couldn’t help a little fishing;

“So, is your boyfriend gonna be really mad or he’s used to it?”

She smiled at him, her eyes finally meting his, all shiny and sparkling like and she bit her lip before dodging his question;

“You’re not subtle”, she let him know, so he figured a bit of self-deprecation was the way to go;

“But I thought I did so good.” 

She laughed at that but never actually answered his so obvious question, saying;

“Do you think Patty is gonna tell?”

“No, I think she’s all bark.” 

“I don’t know”, she said, “I think she’s trying to find a way to get rid of me there’s a long time now.”

He offered her a smile. His brain hadn’t gone back into functioning on its proper way yet and if he opened his mouth he would say something really stupid, sort of like _no one in their right minds would want that._ Or worse. Way worse. Like _I like the taste of your lip balm_ level of stupid. So he kept quiet as she avoided his eyes again and fussed on the stuff he had lying around on his desk until there were some loud steps outside his lab.

Iris slid under his desk, shielding herself from view right about the time Detective Brown walked in, saying he needed Barry at a crime scene.

“I’ll be right there.”

“Don’t make me late, Allen. I don’t like how slow you are”, he barked at Barry, bead eyes looking around his lab like he could sniff something wrong in it.

“Right”, Barry said; “I just have to grab my things.”

But Brown was already gone when he finished the sentence, Iris emerging back, and before Barry could decide what to say to her in lieu of goodbye she beat him to it;

“We’ll talk later.”

“Yeah, later.”

* * *

 

Linda was the only one on the Uncovered room when Iris made back to CCPN. Mason had texted her he had found a source willing to talk so he would probably be a while but neither of them knew exactly why Scott wasn’t back from the court house yet.

“Find anything?”, Linda asked her.

“A bunch of other cases of street dealers she represented. We’ll see where that goes from here”, she looked up at the TV, on mute, above Linda’s desk, then she remembered a suggestion she had; “you know, I was thinking, we should try tracing where the money for senator Elm’s charity is coming from if we can’t really trace where is going.”

“What do you think I’m doing right now?”

“Going through old reports on senator Elm’s charity.”

“I like when we think alike”, Linda winked at her.

“Come on”, she said, sitting on her desk besides Linda’s. “Tell me where you are and I’ll help you. I have to think about something other than Laura Smith for a while.”

It was way past 5 o’clock, and the new's room was mostly empty (and neither Scott nor Mason were back yet, so Linda and Iris were mostly waiting on them), when Iris noticed something that peaked her attention;

“Here”, she told Linda; “looks like John Abbott from Abbott & Bates represents the charity.” 

Before Linda could react to that piece of information, or even Iris could fully process it herself, Scott entered the room, slightly out of breath;

“Irey, good, you’re here.”

He was usually stoically composed so the fact that he had this noticeable nervous energy on him was cause for alarm.

“What’s wrong?”, Iris asked.

“Senator Elm, he changed law firms recently, the last bill he tried to pass, it has Hayward & Crawford’s legal analyses attached to it, but before that —”

“He was represented by Abbott & Bates”, Linda finished for him.

“I tried talking to Laura Smith, said I needed representation and that she had been recommended to me but the receptionist told me that Smith is off on a medical leave…”

But Iris wasn’t listening to how Scott had spend most of his evening staking out in front of her town house anymore. Her focus was on the TV they always had on mute on their room. Iris raised the sound on it, suddenly cold with confirmation: a gas leak caused a minor explosion on the apartment building, which was now on fire, on the corner of 8th avenue and Hackberry street.

Linda and Scott grew quiet behind her and Scott was the one to ask her;

“Irey, what’s wrong?”

“That’s Barry’s building.” 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, the making out scene was totally inspired by Matt(hew) and Elektra and the total fanfic feeling that scene provided


	5. Chapter 5

A paramedic who had introduced herself but whose name Barry had forgotten tended to the wound on his shoulder as he spotted Iris, about 40 feet away, eyes searching around the area. She pushed the “do not cross” tape line and the second her eye fell on him Barry saw her shoulders dropping, as she let out a breath of relief, but then there was a fireman talking to her, trying to get her away from the area and Barry couldn’t hear anything, not with the cacophony coming from everywhere around him but he could see Iris pointing at him as she got herself out of the fireman’s reach, walking firmly towards Barry.

“Barry!”

“Do you know her, sir?”

The paramedic who looked way younger than him, probably too young to be a paramedic in the first place, asked him and he just nodded at her, the burning pain on his shoulder suddenly subsided by the sight of Iris. Not that it made any sense, but it also didn’t make it any less truth, specially as she hugged him, carefully avoiding the hurt area, the smell of her hair engulfing him. It was a great contrast to the smoke he had been inhaling to a certain level for the last 45 minutes. Felt like more though, felt like a life time since he turned on the light of his living room and was suddenly projected several feet away.

“Are you ok?”, she asked him, a panic look still all over her pretty face; “when I heard — oh, god! Why aren’t you answering your phone?” and she pointed the question with a soft punch on his good shoulder; “You can’t do that to me! I was shaking so much I thought I wouldn’t be able to drive here!”

He smiled fondly at her. Until an hour ago he wasn’t sure if he had anyone in this city in case of emergency, now he figured he had Iris, in some way, and he would take her, in pretty much anyway.

“I’m fine, Iris”, he guaranteed her, trying to stand up so he could hug her properly, but she pushed him back down on the hospital bed, sited in front of her and said;

“You shouldn’t be on your feet.”

But she held his right hand in hers, and with the free one she brushed his hair off his forehead, and it was such a delicate, intimate gesture that he felt all of his blood rushing to his face, Iris didn’t seem to noticed him blushing though, turning to the paramedic, questioning why he wasn’t being taken to the hospital as Barry explained to her that he had to sort things out with his landlord and the insurance company.

Iris wouldn’t take it though, specially not when the paramedic told her he might have broken ribs from the fall, she vanished for a couple of minutes after that, coming back with a guy from the insurance company and making Barry sign her a permission to deal temporarily with the apartment bureaucracy so he could be taken to do whatever test was needed. 

Later, at the hospital, waiting for the last of his tests results to come back (apparently it was just a second degree burn on a small area on his left shoulder, and a contusion on the rib area. No broken bones. Painkillers and treating the wound would do the trick) Barry was inpatient and unsettled, ready to go home, except he very probably wouldn’t be able to, there wouldn’t be a home left in living conditions in the first place.

Iris arrived on the moment he was about to go crazy, pacing up and down the waiting room. She held an origami flower in her hand and a worried look on her face as she talked to someone on her cellphone.

“Yeah, ok. Thank you so much, dad” — she paused, giving Barry a soft smile, hearing to what her dad, apparently, was saying on the other side of the line, until; “yeah, I’m on the hospital now and then I’m going home”, another pause and then; “all right. I love you too.” 

She took a deep breath, placing her hand on his non-injured shoulder and Barry suddenly noticed how much taller than her he was. It was a weird thing to be noticing at that moment.

“So, what’s the verdict?”, she asked him.

“Second degree burn on my shoulder and a contusion. Apparently I was very lucky.”

She laughed and he was surprised by his relief, that someone was there with him, that he didn’t had to explain to her that the doctor informed him he was very lucky when what he was feeling about his burned shoulder (and home) was anything but luck, that she somehow seemingly understood that by looking at him.

Iris sat down at the plastic blue chair and he sat by her side as she told him;

“Ok, so I talked to the insurance company, I had to sign about a hundred forms including a declaration that I’m pretty sure states that I take the responsibility for anything you will find missing on your place. No one is sure if the damage is structural yet, and the insurance has to wait for the Fire Department report. They’ll contact you with information about how long the repairs are gonna take, but the fire department did let me into your apartment, they were allowing people to gather some of their stuff so I got you some clothes and toiletries and the books that were by your bed and your laptop, it’s all in my car — ”

“Thank you.”

She nodded at him, inhaling deeply, pausing a little bit before continuing;

“This was on your coffee table”, she told him, showing the paper flower and Barry couldn’t understand how on earth that ended up there. It was a pretty origami, but nonetheless…

“You didn’t make it then”, and the way she said it sent an unpleasant shiver down his spine.

“No”, he confirmed.

“Barry, it’s an iris.”

He took the flower from her hands, analysing it, and she was right, it was an iris, they even picked a soft purple paper for it and it surprised him he hand’t made the connection himself.

“Somebody knows it”, she told him; “it was a warning, for you or for me, I’m not sure.”

Probably for her if the aim of the explosion was to get him killed, Barry concluded, but he never said any of it out loud, so Iris continued; 

“I called my dad, he knows somebody at the CCFD”, she explained; “it was criminal, a cut on the gas line on your apartment”.

“Oh, God!”

“My dad went with one of his officers to do a search on my apartment, apparently everything is fine, so we can stay there tonight, except now I’ve got a paranoid dad that wants me to have policeman escorting me everywhere I go.”

“I’m sorry.”

She smiled, holding his hand in hers while they waited, offering her information as his emergency contact as he filled the forms to be discharged from the hospital and there was so much to process (the fire, the fact it was criminal, the fact that it was aimed at him), that Barry wasn’t even able to properly mull over the meaning of scribbling her name on a piece of paper, somehow linking himself to her. 

Iris pretended like it was nothing, no big deal she kept telling him, and he studied her, trying to figure out how much of it was pity that he had no one who lived close enough to rush to the hospital if something happened to him, and how much of it was that she actually cared. She seemed to care a great deal, going through all sorts trouble, running to his apartment when she heard the news, siting with him now.

She kept quiet on the ride to her place, driving attentively, and Barry watched her. She was still the prettiest person he had even met in his life, even with the bags under her eyes, the worried stamped on her face, and he contemplated their silence and how it was something he had never shared with anyone else.

Iris lived in an undoubtedly expensive apartment building, with an underground garage and magnetic remote-controlled gate. She told Barry how she used to live in a shitty flat with no security whatsoever throughout college and a couple of years afterwards but when she received the first threatening letter, after a case of the Uncovered, her parents had made her move into a building she couldn’t properly afford, so they paid her maintenance fee, which, she insisted, was senseless exorbitant, but let her mom sleep through the night.

When she opened her front door Barry was presented to her spacious (and empty) living room, painted in soft pastel pink, and a drape in a flow-y fabric hanged opened besides a big window with view for the city. There wasn’t a lot of furniture, just a couch and two armchairs, a coffee table and a desk full of books and papers and more books on the ground, against the walls, adorned with some posters in between the other three doors, which Barry presumed led to her bathroom, bedroom and kitchen. When Iris caught his eyes wondering around she said, depositing a box full of his stuff on the ground, by the front door;     

“It’s a work in progress. Hey, dad?”, she called to the place, but it was a woman who came out of one the doors, the kitchen’s Barry saw, walking a little further into the living room, and before he had time to guess who she was Iris asked; 

“Mom, what are you doing here?”

Her mother gave her a tight hug alongside her response;

“Cooking, so a little gratitude is appreciated.”

After a short discussion in which her mom defended her worried was necessary and Iris maintained it wasn’t they were joined by her father, who claimed to be fixing her shower head and as Iris hugged him she joked;

“Now saving me from low water pressure, that’s being a real hero.”

It was a strange way to be introduced the Mr. and Mrs. West, Barry figured, it was even stranger having Iris’ mom insisting for him to call them “Joe and Francine”, specially cause “Joe” didn’t seemed all that comfortable with the informality. Or maybe it was just the fact that they both knew Barry would spend the night in their daughter’s one-bedroom apartment. Or maybe Barry had just inhaled too much smoke from the fire and it was all in his imagination. So when Iris offered him a shower before diner he took it gladly. Not that that wasn’t much needed, but he wanted to give the family an opportunity to be left alone, however momentary. And  as he approached the kitchen, after his shower, he concluded he was right after all, if the raised voices were anything to go by they needed the privacy.

Barry lingered by the door, afraid to intrude into their family discussion at the same time that just standing there, overhearing it, felt like an invasion.

“All I’m saying is I got you a gun for you to carry it, not for you to leave it in your nightstand drawer”, Joe pointed out, and even though Barry couldn’t actually see Iris he could _hear_ her rolling her eyes as she said;

“Dad, please!”

“Iris, I’m not kidding, you don’t want an officer escorting —”

“That’s just drawing attention to myself —”

“Then you carry that damn gun, and you better use it when necessary”, and that was cue for a very exasperated breath from Iris, as her dad continued; “And you stop running towards danger! You are not a cop —”

“Because you wouldn’t let me be one.”

Barry never knew that. He knew she hadn’t been a journalist major, she had told him how she got into that a little by chance, a little by having a specific set of skills needed by the rest of the Uncovered, and that her ex boyfriend, who was one of them, suggested Iris and the others asked her to stay on a permanent basis afterwards (now, how Iris and her ex managed to stay friends was a mystery to Barry, he had never been able to accomplish such thing with any of his exes. But then again none of them had been Iris and he could see how anything would be better than having her out of his life, so he could empathise with the guy). 

He had been so taken back by the overheard revelation that he didn’t even noticed how now he was standing by the kitchen door until Francine looked straight at him, causing the other two to looked back as well and Barry suddenly felt incredibly self-conscious to be interrupting this family thing, so he offered;

“Sorry.”

Francine smiled at him, saying;

“Oh, dear, don’t worry, they have this fight about once every full moon, you stick around and you’ll witness it plenty.”

Iris wouldn’t meet his eyes though, and turning her back at him, to check the oven she said;

“We should eat. I’m starving.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I had to cut this chapter short or I wouldn't manage the update and apparently people are very worried about Barry (*puff* like I was ever gonna kill him). I'm not so sure how I'll manage the next one. Due some real-life problems it's probably gonna take a while cause I'll have to fit what I had planned for this one and that was cut as well as what I have planned for the next, and on top of that I'm not so sure when I'll have time to sit down and write it. But hopefully this will suffice for now. Thanks to everyone who is following the story and for all the encouraging comments!


	6. Chapter 6

When Iris closed the door behind her parents she couldn’t help but to feel a little bit of relief. And some guilt that accompanied it. Specially if she would stop to think about how Barry had lost his dad, about how his mom was thousands of miles away and couldn’t rush over to his apartment and cook him his favourite meal.

It wasn’t that she wasn't grateful for her mom and dad, she was, very much so. Her mom was probably her best friend now that she had grown up, but she was also her mom, and the way she talked to Barry was too much like the way she used to talk to Scott to Iris’ liking.

She left Barry on her bed after a short and awkward “I don’t have an extra bed so we can either share or you’ll have to sleep on the couch” conversation and went to take her shower, trying to wash the sudden fear, that she didn’t want to admit to anyone, away with the grimy of the day.

There was something else bothering her, nagging her insistently ever since she saw the news of the fire on TV: she had grown attached Barry. Too attached if the sheer panic she felt until knowing for sure, until seeing with her own eyes, that he was ok, was anything to go by.

Iris would hardly ever get a crush, she also didn’t go on many dates. She would agree to some of them every now and again if she thought the boy asking was particularly pretty (yeah, so she liked pretty boys? long eyelashes were always enhancing features, no gender’s discrimination necessary), or if Linda would set her up with a promised soul mate, but she hadn’t had a real boyfriend since Scott and she wasn’t so sure how she would like one.

But Barry… Barry sneaked up on her, sweet, kind, awkward Barry, and now that she noticed she already liked him too much. She had liked his lips on hers as well, and the way his hands had somehow managed to travel respectfully up her legs, and the smell of his fresh aftershave, or maybe it was perfume, and the way his eyes gleamed whenever he looked at her.

She really liked his eyes.

His stuff sat on her sink and on her bathtub rim now, she could sniff around if she wanted to, just to be sure if it was the aftershave after all, but just opening his shampoo bottle felt like an invasion somehow.

She decided to wash her hair even if it meant dealing with its unmanageable state the next day. She desperately needed to feel the warm water hitting her scalp and try not to think about it. About the fire, or about the origami iris, or about Barry, sitting on her bed, wearing his sleep clothes.

When she walked into her bedroom again he was on the phone;

“I promise you I’m fine, mom. It’s nothing, really.”

She turned her back on him, grabbing two extra pillows and an extra blanket on her closet and thinking about how other people’s bedding would always smell a little weird, wondering if her house smelled weird to him.

“Yeah, I have a place to stay”, she heard him say.

There was a loaded pause and he answered the question Iris hadn’t heard; “No, I’m at Iris’”, he said, making her wonder if he had talked about her to his mom. The lack of explanation of who exactly was Iris suggested so.

“Ok, I’ll call you tomorrow, mom. You too.”

She fussed around her room a little bit, moving her stuff around and avoiding looking at him, wondering if the short pyjamas had been a mistake. They were feeling like a mistake now that she contemplated the chance of her naked legs finding his clothed ones in the middle of the night. But the thought of it send a shiver down her spine and something on her stomach did a pleasant somersault to it, and when he asked her;

“Are you sure you don’t mind me sleeping on your bed?”

She had already decided.

“I’m sure”, she answered, sitting on the edge of her mattress.

He had picked her side of the bed so she sat by him, her legs hanging off the ground, and she could feel her skin tingling on the back of her arm, where it touched his, and without facing him still, while she gathered courage, she asked; “How are you feeling?”

“I don’t know. Awake, in a weird and unpleasant way. Unsettled, I guess it’s a better word. What about you?”

“I feel restless. Not very pleasant either.”

She finally turned to him and Barry was close, so close that if she moved about two or three inches their noses would touch. He looked her in the eyes and she wondered if he could feel something charging too, if it filled his lungs and his ears with electricity like it filled hers. She reached for his glasses, taking them off and depositing them on her nightstand and Barry froze under her gesture, she could see him holding his breath, which cause a smile, probably smugger than she would have intended, out of her, as she bumped their noses together.

His lips chased hers but Iris pulled away, nuzzling into his neck, lips grazing on his jaw line before she allowed her lips to meet his, sucking on his bottom one and it drew a sharp, surprised, breath out of him and then he parted his lips wide for her and Iris could finally make sure she was remembering the taste of him right from their first (fake) kiss, making sure it was real this time, her tongue, just the tip, slipping into his mouth, and then aiming for the ceiling of it but Barry pulled away before it could turn on something else, before her hands (or his) could wonder, an embarrassing string of spit between them;

“Iris.”

She also liked the way he said her name, like he could turn it into anything he would like to, like those four little letters besides each other could suddenly mean whatever Barry wished them to. Now they were a question, Iris knew that much, but she didn’t have the answer to it, so instead she offered;

“I’m not very good at talking.”

“Ok”, he agreed, the sound of it muffled by their lips already back together, but he placed his hands on her shoulders and pulled away again, his eyes full of eagerness and fear, searching for something in her face, and Iris could empathise to the feeling.

She suddenly, inexplicably, remembered of that one time when she was nine and her, Wally and their mom and dad all went to Coast City for the summer and she wanted to jump at the deep scaring pool of the hotel they were staying, but was too afraid to actually do so. She could hear her mom telling her “ _jump, Iris, just hold your breath and jump_ ”. So she held her breath now and gave him the little bit more she somehow knew he needed;

“When I heard about the fire, I was so scared of loosing you and it’s… it doesn’t make any sense, I mean — I didn’t even know that I had you.”

He nodded at her and promised;

“You do. You have me.”

* * *

Barry turned on bed, keeping his lids closed, searching for Iris, hopefully still naked and warm and soft and sweet smelling by his side, but the bed was empty. After a discontented moan he gave himself a few moments to just relish on and relive what had happened a little bit, putting off checking his phone, buzzing and lighting on the nightstand of his side of the bed.

Not that he did have a side on her bed, Iris had a side. She had pushed him from the side he had picked in the first place. But then again, in the middle of the night with limbs tangled together it had been hard to tell sides.

He reached for his glasses on her nightstand and there were 7 missed calls from precinct phone lines. He ignored them as he got dressed, his clothes lost on her bedding and on the ground, and studied Iris’ bedroom once again, full of morning light now, before venturing on the rest of her apartment to find Iris in the kitchen, unfortunately clothed, on the same shorts he took off of her the night before, an old CCU sweatshirt that, he realised with a pang of jealousy, was too big to have always belonged to her, and bright blue knee socks. Iris sat on the counter, drinking coffee and eating a cookie while reading a newspaper, and he wondered who else besides her still bought the paper version of it.

“Hey”, he called.

She looked up at him with a smile that he was pretty sure defied some kind of law of physics. It very probably made time stand still. He took it as invitation, approaching her as she told him;

“Good morning. There’s coffee and cookies. I’m making toast and there are eggs in the fridge if you want it. I don’t usually have eggs in the morning, or ever, except when they are into the brownies or the cookies, but you're welcome to it.”

He let his hands wonder up her thighs, feeling the soft skin where her tiny shorts didn’t cover, a little scared of how happy she was making him feel.

“Toast and cookies are fine”, he said. She pressed a little kiss to his lips and turning around to reach the one of the cupboards, she grabbed him a cup, and as he filled it coffee Iris sneaked her hands under his shirt, and let them travel from his belly to his chest, and he was pretty sure she was blindly tracing the tattoo he had there. That made him smile into their kiss pondering how strange it would be to describe yesterday as a good day after all.

“How are you feeling?”, she asked, brushing his hair off his forehead and he nuzzled on her neck

“My shoulder hurts a little and my apartment kinda exploded, but I’m ok, I guess. Weirdly happy”, he added

She granted him to the cutest little giggle as she repeated;

“Weird.”

“Yeah. So weird.”

She giggled again as he brought her closer, her feet finding a place to rest on the small of his back and it was already familiar, the way her legs hugged his hips and her taste under his lips, and the way she licked his bottom lip, her tongue dancing in his mouth. Her hands pulled his t-shirt up but she never broke their kiss long enough so it could be properly taken off and it was blissful oblivious to have his whole world to be just Iris until she pulled away unexpectedly, making him ghost after her lips as they moved, forming words;    

“Your phone is pretty insistent”, she pointed out.

“Yeah.”

“You should answer it.”

“No”, he mumbled, dragging the word.

“No?”, she asked, her voice full of her smile. 

“No, cause if I answer it then the real world will come back and in the real world there’s burned homes and —” he was about to say dead girls but that would totally ruin the kissing mood so he just kissed her again instead.

She pulled away again, to the popping sound of her toaster this time, and jumped off the counter saying;

“Toast is ready”

Barry took it as his cue to finally answer to the call; though a second later he wished he hadn’t. It was Patty, asking how he was, how was the apartment, if he had a place to stay and she wouldn’t accept answers like _fine_ and _burned_ and _yes_ , she needed him to elaborate on it and Barry on the other hand needed to kiss Iris again cause just his hand travelling up and down her spine while she spread the butter on their toasts, was not enough, he needed her lips on him, his lips on her, he needed less clothes and maybe convince her she should keep the knee socks on, and nothing else.

Iris moved away from his touch, going back to her paper, darting her eyes at him every now and again, as he had the phone passed to a worried Captain Singh who wanted to talk to him that afternoon.

“Who was it?”, she asked him.

“Patty, then Singh”, Iris looked at him with a quizzical unreadable expression and he questioned; “what?”

“Nothing.”

She was by his side again, brushing her hair behind her ears like she was always doing whenever she was nervous and Barry told her;

“I may not know you a long time but I do know you enough to know that is not a nothing face.”

She pulled his glasses off his face, placing them on herself and it was a strangely satisfying blurred image even though she was using it as a stalling mechanism. He stood there, quiet, waiting, and if she really wanted to scape then he would let her, but his curiosity stopped him from being the one to give up. After placing his glasses back on him Iris asked;

“Do you think she’s, I don’t know, into you, or something?”

He would have smiled to her jealousy, a little proudly, a little smugly, but the raw vulnerability on Iris’ face stopped him from it as he tried, and failed, to find something other than _no_ to say.

“What? No — Iris, no.”

“I mean, maybe the reason she never told on us was cause she didn’t want you getting into trouble, you know.”

“She just wanted to know if I’m ok, have a place to stay and stuff.”

Iris backed him up against her cupboard, stilling him in place with a hand on his neck and the other on his chest. She got to the tip of her toes and gave him a kiss that somehow felt like a warning and there was nothing funny about it, not the look in her eyes, not the pleasant shiver it send down his spine, flopping his stomach a stealing away his breath.

“I’m a very possessive person”, she told him and for a brief moment he considered telling her she could do whatever she wanted with him, but before he could form the words she continued; “I’m not particularly proud of it, and I try to keep it under control and I try to rationalise it and I know it’s not… fair to you but it would be great if you could, you know, help me.”

He wondered how she managed it, being harsh and kind, commanding and vulnerable, at the same time.

He figured it was time to try and retribute in whatever way he could, after all she told him what he needed to hear the night before and she was being honest now, so he took a deep breath and searched for his words;

“Iris, that first day, when I saw you at the scene, I was — I don’t know, it was the strangest feeling, like everything just stood still. The way I feel, the way you make me feel — you just make everything better, and last night when I was siting there with paramedics hovering over me, and you showed up, I — you were the exact person I wanted there. You are the only person I want.”

She looked up at him after that with the sweetest look in her eyes and Barry figured that for once in his life he must have said something right. She smiled softly and told him;

“Ok, that helps.”

And she pulled him to her, plastering herself to him, as he grabbed her and placed her back on the counter so they could be levelled once again, but before there could actually be any playing time her phone ringed obnoxiously loud, interrupting very important business.

“Now it’s your phone”, he said, the picture of a good-looking beard guy flashing on the screen and it read Scott under it. Iris sneaked out from under Barry, suddenly left cold with her absence and it would be very difficult to deal with the fact he wasn’t going to be able to touch her all the time.

“Hey, Scott, what’s up?

* * *

“Staking out”, Iris said; “Don't believe the hype, kids. It just seems such fun in the movies cause they cut it to the good part.”

That got a laugh out of Scott and Iris considered telling him. About Barry that was. While they were stuck in front of the weird looking warehouse, doing mostly nothing anyway. The way Scott was slurping on his soda was driving Iris crazy so any distractions would be welcomed; instead she yanked the cup away from him, getting another laugh in response.

They had just had a mostly silent struggle cause Iris maintained they should get into the warehouse after L. M. Smith and try to see what she was doing and hear to whatever was going on there, but Scott wanted to keep taking pictures and just wait, saying it was too dangerous to venture into somewhere they didn’t exactly know if would provide a place to hide, saying with the ideas she usually got Iris would get herself killed one of these days.

After a while they reached a middle, he allowed her to stick a GPS tracker on L. M. Smith’s car and she agreed to keep on waiting for nothing, siting on his car.

“So, is your friend ok?”, Scott asked her.

“Second degree burn on his shoulder but he’s fine”, she answered without facing him, allowing herself a sideways glance.

He smiled a little smile to himself and Iris guessed that she wouldn’t have to tell him anything; Scott could read her through and through after all those years.

“You like him, don’t you?”, he asked, nonetheless.

“I think I might.”

His smiled turned bigger and he rolled his eyes and shook his head disapprovingly.

“What?” she asked, but couldn’t help the smile herself. Scott would always tell her she was too much of a cop’s daughter for her own good and she never knew exactly what he meant by that but she figured it was about her inabilities to admit her feelings. She thought she was doing pretty well with Barry on that front but she needn’t tell Scott that.

Iris and Scott had broken up because somewhere along the lines they became more friends than anything else. In their senior year he developed a big crush on a girl from his Environmental Reporting class and at first Iris thought that her lack of jealousy was growth, it took her a while to realise there was something not quite right if she was finding herself so completely out of the realms of her personality.

She dumped him after that and Scott was really upset about it for a hot minute and then he realised Iris was, of course, right, and they managed to re-establish their friendship.

They never talked about her love life though. Firstly because she never really had that much going on, secondly because they worked as friends and she knew she wasn’t jealous of him anymore, that was the whole point of it, but she wasn’t really sure he felt the same. Apparently she was about to find out.

“I know that you haven’t really had a relationship since we’ve broke up —”

“You on the other hand…”

“All I’m saying is, I know you would probably rather talk to Linda or even your mom, but you can talk to me about it, if you want to. Cause I know you, Irey, I know that you get scared and sometimes you have this need to pull away, but maybe you shouldn’t, you know.”

She dropped her head, letting her hair fall as a curtain, hiding her face from him and she said;

“We’ve kissed.”

“Oh, so you do like him”, he said, teasingly.

“Shut up.”

His playful expression dropped and he turned serious, pointing something to Iris;

“Look, there’s someone arriving.”

“Holy shit.”

“What? What did I miss?”

Iris was out of the car before she could answer to Scott’s question, though, causing him to jump out as well, following her with steps bigger than hers and grabbing her hand, causing her to turn and face him;

“What’s wrong?”, he asked.

“That’s detective Brown.”

“The one responsible for the investigation?”

“Yeah.”

She freed herself from his touch, walking decisively towards the warehouse once again, but once again Scott stopped her.

“Iris!”

“I have to know what the hell is going on there.”

“Then I’ll go.”

“No!”

“Iris, I’m not letting you go there.”

And she was suddenly full of anger. Like he had the power to allow her to do anything. Like his permission was something she needed;

“Are you fucking kidding me? I don’t have time for your sexist bullshit, Scottie. I’m the one with a gun, I’m the one who knows how to shoot, I’m the one who can take care of myself if something happens in there. You stay in the car and be ready to drive away if necessary.”

“Irey, this girl was most likely killed by these people.”

“I’m not getting killed. Now you stay here and if I’m not back in 20 minutes you call Singh.”

“Fuck, Iris! You’ve got a death wish, I swear.”

But he didn’t stop her anymore, and she told him, just to be safe;

“Don’t do anything stupid.”

And all she had time to hear before he was out of earshot was;

“You should really follow your own advice.”


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beta-ed by my dearest D (Ishipit87) who did some magic for my writer's block.

Not even a full hour after Iris had left to meet Scott that morning Barry had settled on her couch watching the footage from the subway security camera for the millionth time before going into his meeting with Singh schedule for that afternoon.

He couldn’t explain why he was so obsessed with it, it wasn’t like he would suddenly be able to see something that wasn’t there in the first place but now he had decided to stop following Casey and just watch the station as a whole, see if something would catch his eyes if he would stop trying to focus on her.

He was about to take another bite on one of the cookies left from breakfast when a slightly blurred figure flicked on the screen making Barry stop half way, a cold feeling spreading throughout him, from his stomach to the tip of his toes: detective Brown.

It couldn’t be, could it? It was one thing to be a prick that nobody liked it was another to be a corrupted detective responsible for the investigation of a crime… No. It must have been a coincidence. So Brown happened to be at the station on the time of the crime, that didn’t make him guilty, it didn’t make sense to think this way. But it made less sense that Brown wouldn’t have mention to the investigative team he had assembled that he was at the station at the time of the “suicide”. 

From Iris’ apartment to the precinct he must have tried her cellphone about a thousand times, silently praying _pick up, please, pick up,_ but they were all in vain. Pacing up and down in front of Singh’s office, trying to decide whether or not he should tell the captain about it, if that was betraying Iris and her investigation, at the same time that her lack of answer when she was supposed to be on, as she had put, a boring stake out, was making him completely worried. 

Barry hadn’t had the time to decide though: Singh burst out of there, calling officers to accompany him to some warehouse and at first Barry couldn’t understand why all the sudden it was so difficult to breath, like he was drowning or something, until the captain turned to him and said;

“I just got a called from Iris’ friend, Scott.”

 

* * *

  

It was a weird thing finally seeing Laura Smith. All the photos of her Iris had found online showed a surprisingly different person, younger, blonder and longer hair. Warmer.

Maybe that last part was all Iris’ imagination coming to play, maybe it was merely the way her voice sounded as she reprimanded detective Brown;

“I told you to take care of it.”

“And I did!”

“By calling attention to the investigation? By making people start to think it’s not just a young reporter’s delusion? By giving whoever is looking for it some extra clues?”

They weren’t exactly at Iris’ line of vision at the moment, she was hiding behind one of the five containers that filled the warehouse. Iris hadn’t been able to check what was inside of them. If only she could reach the tiny window above her she could ideally sneak into it, or at the very least sneak a peek.

“They are kids”, Iris heard Brown say, “they are scared, I made sure of it, they are not going to be able to figure anything out.”

And then, like being knocked on the head Iris realised he was talking about her and Barry, about the explosion and the origami. 

“They might not be as stupid as you.”

L. M. Smith had a collected calm on her voice that somehow made the skinny woman scary. The type of composure only rational people, too rational to have enough compassion in them, did have.

“You don’t talk to me like that!” Brown barked back, creating a great contrast between his reaction and Smith’s, but it was clear to Iris that whatever this was Smith was the one in charge. Lawyer above detective, though it must have been more useful to have a detective working for you if you are the organised crime. Iris would like to think that Brown wouldn’t be that easily replaceable, that the police force wasn’t all that corruptible, that if they lost someone there wouldn’t be two in line just waiting. 

“You do your job then.”

“I am.”

Iris found that if she grounded herself on a dent on the metal she could reach the little window, allowing her to look inside the container.

“I told you this shipment couldn’t come in until we’ve got things resolved, yet here we are inspecting it”, Smith pointed.

The shipment in question was something Iris had a view of now. It was full of packs on opaque and grey plastic and she couldn’t be sure without actually opening them but she suspected it was drugs: that was the obvious answer to it. Probably cocaine. Iris had heard from one of the reporters at CCPN that the influx of drugs on the city had quadrupled on the last couple of months and that they knew someone on the government that suspected that the headquarters of the drug traffic on the state was on Central City. So if Iris was right Senator Elms was the head of this drug traffic and got away with it all for god knows how long by having a detective helping him, not solving the crimes that actually landed on the police department and probably hiding many others that nobody ever heard of.

“And I told you this isn’t my fault.” Brown shouted.

“We need to call Andrew and Ben and figure this thing out.” Smith responded on the same collected voice, like she hadn’t been shouted at.

“Shouldn’t _he_ know about this?”

Iris waited for Smith’s answer so her drop from the window would be muffled by her voice but it never came, her arms were already burning with the weight of her on body when finally Brown spoke again;

“Ok, ok, fine, I’ll talk to Andrew and Ben, it’s all good”, and Iris let herself go.

Her landing was louder than she had anticipated and she had her confirmation of being heard when Smith said;

“I think we’ve got a rat problem.”

Iris problem in turn was made bigger by the fact that to be able to hold herself on the window Iris had hidden her gun on the inside of her right boot and any brusque movements could betray her location.

Iris could feel someone approaching, probably Brown judging by the heavy sounds of the steps and before she could think of a scape rout that didn’t involve stepping right into their direction Brown was grabbing her by the arm. 

Iris threw herself in the ground in an attempt to get free, pulling her gun out of her boot, aiming at Brown, missing how Smith was in turn aiming hers at Iris, only noticing it when she actually shoot.

In the haste Iris pushed Brown in front of her. The bullet hit him in the leg and Smith, rolling her eyes said;

“Your incompetence is increasingly astounding.”

Iris pulled herself up, trying to keep her head in place and not be sick with the amount of blood coming out of Brown’s leg.

Iris honestly thought that kind of gory stuff only happened on Tarantino’s movies yet here she was, having to remind herself that the detachment she was feeling from the sight of it wasn’t real, that this was happening in front of her and she had to react. 

Brown was failing to stand up himself, Smith on the other hand was ready to shoot at Iris again, and Iris knew if she got another shot she would make damn sure she hit her aim so she took a shot herself, aiming at Smith’s arms.

Her bullet merely brushed Smith though, making a hole in the undoubtedly expensive overcoat she was wearing and Smith offered her an unimpressed face, telling Brown;

“I thought you had cleaned your mess!”

The sound of sirens suddenly filled the warehouse and Smith shoot another time, a bullet that passed close to Iris’ ear hitting something metallic, making a loud reverberant sound that took Iris’ balance away for a moment and then when Iris turned to face her again she was already gone, and she could see, coming in on the opposite entryway, Scott, a panic look on his face that didn’t subside by the sight of Iris standing, somehow.

Iris could see his lips moving but the buzz inside her ear didn’t actually let her hear what he was saying but it suddenly reminded her that Brown was still behind her, on the ground, so she turned, pointing her gun at him again and he, from the ground still, pulled both of his hands up in surrender.

She would never be able to explain what happened next, only that suddenly there were loads of people filling the place, including Captain Singh and Barry and she was surrounded by paramedics saying something about her being on shock and Iris didn’t want to stay sited on place, she wanted to know what was happening, what was going to happen to Brown, how they were planning on catching Laura Smith and Scott hoovering over her was making her more impatient, he should be investigating, couldn’t he see she would be fine? That she shouldn’t be his focus right now?

“Iris, can you focus on me?”

It was the paramedic in front of her, swigging a bright light on her face.

“I’m fine”, she said, hoping that would get him off of her.

“Do you know where you are?”

“I know where I am”, what kind of stupid question was that? Then turning to Scott she said; “we have to talk to Singh, see if we can find out what they are going to do, we are gonna loose the story staying here.”

Scott looked between her and the paramedic tending to her and he wasn’t listening. Iris would have screamed at him if she had the strength to hear anything that loud, instead she pushed him away from her and insisted;

“Go, go!”

“Are you sure you are ok?”

“I’m fine, just go!”

She looked around, searching for Barry, she could have sworn she had seen him there somewhere yet he wasn’t by her side. After a little while, dragged longer by the cold of the metal of a stethoscope on her chest and the tightening of a blood pressure monitor on her arm, she found him, he had a pair of crime-scene-gloves on and the second his eyes met hers he dropped whatever he was holding and walked towards her and when his hands reached out for hers, when he rubbed a calming thumb on the knuckles of Iris’ hands, for the first time in a too long while she felt like what was happening in front of her was real.

 

* * *

 

When they arrived back at home, at Iris’ home, Barry was mutely overwhelmed. He wondered if the fear she felt the day before, with the explosion on his apartment was anything like that: desperately paralysing, lungs filled with something cold, making it hard to breath. 

At the scene, when her brother and her parents arrived to make sure she was ok, and the way Scott kinda belonged there among them, giving Wally a sideways hug and standing tall besides Joe without getting the disapproving glances Barry entailed out of him made Barry feel out of place, like she had this whole world and he didn’t fit in it somehow. 

Iris had insisted she was fine though, that she would have lunch at her parents on Sunday, after everything was published, that she loved them very much but that she had to go home and work.

And it was Barry taking her home. It was him who stood there as she dropped her bag on the floor and started to unbutton her shirt, causing him to turn away for a second before realising that if she was undressing in front of him he had permission to look. He hadn’t touch her though, not like that, not since the morning in her kitchen, not like he needed to, to make sure it was real, Iris standing there in front of him, safe and all warmed skin. 

She took her pants off too and stood there in front of him, in her underwear, a soft pink that popped against her skin, she pulled her hair, and it was curly today, up in a bun, and she was too pretty, impossibly so.

Before he could convince himself out of it Barry pulled her to him, in a hug, peppering kisses on her neck and her jaw and Iris breath hitched, cradling his head in her hands, her nails digging into his scalp; 

“I need a shower”, she informed him, causing Barry to pull away.

“Ok.”

“Do you wanna join?”

And Barry really didn’t need to be asked twice, crashing his lips to hers in a hurry, like the offer wouldn’t still stand if he took too long.

They didn’t make it to the bathroom though, her desk felt too much like as good of a place as any. He pressed her against it with a kiss on her painted lips and one on her birth mark, on the swell of her left boob, another one on her chest-bone, in the middle of her boobs, then dropping to his knees one on her belly button and two on the hips, one each side, while his hands were otherwise occupied, feeling up her ass, pulling her panties off…

 

* * *

 

Barry was tracing her spine, delicately, softly, and alongside with the warm water from the shower hitting her skin it resulted on a soothing combination. Iris closed her eyes relishing on the feeling of his fingers rubbing lightly a spot on the back of her neck.

“It there something there?”

“Yeah, a lovebite.”

She smiled at that, glad she had her back to him so he couldn’t see it, the silent confession of attachment, or maybe it was just affection.

Whenever she would think about it, about her and Barry and this thing between them an overwhelming fear would surge through her. Fear that he didn’t feel the same, that he didn’t want her the same way, that he would leave her and of how broken she would be. 

It was weird how whenever Barry was there though and she wasn’t thinking, she could feel it, them, working, how they fitted together. He smelled good, he tasted good, their saliva (and other body fluids) were definitively compatible (she had been in love before but no one had ever felt like him under her fingertips), but it was more than that, it was the way he reacted exactly how she needed him to, offered exactly the right thing, travelled his hand by her body, grounding her, soothingly. 

“From yesterday?” she asked, hoping he wouldn’t be able to hear the smile still on her voice.

“Yeah, I mean, I think so”, he answered her, pressing his lips on the place his fingers were, “unless there’s someone else who could have given you one”, and Iris shook her head cause there was definitively no one, and then he turned her on her feet, by the arm, like a ballerina, so she would face him. 

There were beads of water on his long eyelashes and his eyes were bright, and for the millionth time in latest 24 hours Iris wondered if there was a name to it, for the way his eyes changed colours, green on the inner side of the irises, blue on the outer, she would have to look it up. 

She traced the little freckle right under his left eyebrow, filled with another rush of fondness as he pulled her upper lip between his, his hands resting on her hips.

He had a lovebite on his neck too, she could see it now. There were several actually, over his neck and torso, and she hadn’t noticed when she was causing them. He probably bruised way easier than her though, turning his pale skin red wasn’t much of a challenge once she was allowed to touch him, to grab and pull and bite and suck. He was already pink all over just from the hot shower water.

She bit on a particularly enticing spot on his collarbones, quietly settling into him, his warm and steady body, he grew very quiet, the only sounds coming from his body were his soft breathing and the reassuringly beat of his heart. And just the noise of the water hitting the ground wasn’t enough to completely muffle the sound of her door bell going off.

“No”, Barry mumbled, his lips on her temple; “no, no, no.”

“It’s the rest of the team. We have the exposé for Sunday half written but we have to publish something tomorrow even though no one reads the paper on Saturdays, otherwise we’ll loose precedent to another newspaper.”

“No”, he said again, but Iris was already pushing off of him and rinsing off the rest of the soap off her skin.

Barry offered her to go instead though, so she could finish her shower in peace.

“There’s clothes everywhere.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll clean up before I open the door. And I’ll bring you a change of clothes afterwards.”

She smiled at him, stepping out of the shower, placing his glasses back on, and quietly prayed, for whatever entity that would listen to never let him slip away.


	8. Chapter 8

“You’re asking us to trust you with our investigation, Captain, but you don’t seem willing to extend the same courtesy to us,” Mason said in a threatening harsh tone, and it was weirdly something Barry expected Iris to say. He figured when people spent too much time together, they ended up sharing those same quirks.  

Iris’ home was suddenly full of people and if Barry was being completely honest, he was feeling slightly useless among the bunch of journalists negotiating information with Captain Singh and Patty Spivot.

Iris hadn’t been too happy about their presence when Barry re-entered her bathroom with a pair of yoga pants, panties, a bra that looked mostly comfortable (even though his lack of experience in picking bras could have lead to the wrong choice), a t-shirt, and the news that it was actually Singh and Patty at her door and not the rest of the Uncovered, though they arrived shortly after.

 _The nerve_ was actually all Iris had muttered, but Barry could tell who it was about and he could tell that opening her home for someone that didn’t really like her was making Iris anxious.

Barry was now sharing one of the armchairs she had on her living-room with Iris and he grabbed one of her cold hands in both of his, hoping to warm it up and calm her down.

“We want to receive the information before you do a public announcement and we want access to the interrogatory Eddie is conducting on Brown right now and we want to know exactly how you are planning on catching Laura Smith, since she abandoned the car I tracked, and senator Elm, since you guys have virtually nothing on him.”

The sharpness in Iris’s voice surprised Barry and suddenly all the talk around the precinct about her being scary started to make sense.

She was always soft with Barry though and he realised how much he appreciated that.

“Fine. Fine,” Singh conceded, a tired look on his eyes, “but you can only publish it after authorisation or you could potentially compromise the investigation.”

Linda parted her lips and her face suggested she would say something nasty, probably along the lines of how they wouldn’t even have an investigation if it weren’t for the team, or perhaps about how a man under Singh’s supervision had committed this crime so he wasn’t exactly in place to determinate what could or couldn’t compromise anything, but Mason spoke before she could;

“All right.”

“We have information about several properties around the state on senator Elm’s name and on his immediate family,” Linda offered, “but we have nothing on Smith.”

“That’s why I spent two days following her; she’s a ghost, no records of anything, no properties, not even the car is in her name. All we found was her school records and her bar exam,” Scott concluded.

“Right, right” the captain sighed, “can you send me those records on senator Elm? I’m not so sure we got evidence for anything yet…”

Iris jumped to her feet and left towards the kitchen without a word, without as much as a look at him or any other form of silence communication. Barry was about to go after her, worried about when everything that happened that day would actually dawn on her, when Linda asked quietly;

“Let me? I wanna talk to her.”

“Yeah, ok,” Barry conceded.

* * *

 

Iris was sipping on a glass of water, trying to calm herself down, her back to the kitchen door when she heard it being opened. She figured it was Barry, that he would come after her, so the voice she identified instead was a bit of a surprise;

“That girl has got some nerves! I mean, after everything she told us after last time, she’s just there sitting on your living-room like nothing has ever happened?”

Just hearing someone share a bit of her anger was enough comfort to make the water slide down her previous constricted throat more smoothly.

“Thank you!” she said in return, spinning around to face Linda.

Linda had this weirdly unreadable expression on her face as she carefully stepped in Iris’ direction until she stopped briskly and gave Iris a tight hug.

Linda definitely wasn’t a touchy person. Iris was always thankful for her, for how they always seemed to have each other's back on the team and otherwise, she was greatly supportive and their writing styles were somewhat complementary, she was a great friend. But the fact that she was hugging Iris was truly a testament as to how shaken up she must have looked. Or maybe as to how scared Linda must have been when finding out about the shooting. Or perhaps both.

“And she’s totally eyeing your boyfriend,” Linda added, letting Iris go.

“Thank you! I knew I wasn’t projecting!”

Linda smiled a little sly as Iris realised she had just confessed her relationship with Barry to her. Not that them sharing a seat wasn’t enough of a clue, but it wasn’t verbal confirmation.

Linda didn’t seem completely satisfied though, she insisted;

“So he is your boyfriend? I can’t believe you had sex and you didn’t tell me!” she said with a little punch on Iris’s arm.

“I was going to tell you, but too much has happened in too little time.”

And Iris smiled despite herself. This thing with Barry seemed too much when she would stop and try to analyse it, but she was pretty sure the day would have been so much worse without him to ground her. Which ironically was the scary part in the first place. But Iris had decided to focus on all the good she could get, so she was trying her best not to be petrified by it.

Linda was still studying her face and as Iris didn’t offer any additional information she asked;

“Yesterday?”

“Yep.”

“Today?”

“Yep.”

“Look at that smile! You look like someone just ate you right.”

She hadn’t even noticed she was smiling so Iris shook her head and instructed her;

“Shut up.”

But she joined Linda in her laughter and a bit of the weight pressing down on her chest dissipated with it.

“So, what do you think about Mason’s sudden pleasant agreement?” Iris asked her.

Iris wanted to talk about Barry, but not now; not with everyone standing in her living room, not without deciding all she was feeling first.

“It’s obvious bullshit,” Linda told her, and they agreed there so Iris added;

“Hopefully it won’t be too much shit for me to clean up afterwards.”

“Well, even if this whole thing blows up in our faces, you’ve got someone on the inside now and you’re fucking him so I’d say there are pretty good odds of him spilling the beans.”

Iris rolled her eye at the comment. She knew it was a joke but she was actually fearing that Barry could get in trouble because of her.

“I have known Singh since I was five. He’s friends with my dad, he got my brother an internship last summer, so I would still rather he wouldn’t hate me. Or fire Barry because of me.”

“You’ve got good puppy eyes, you’ll be fine,” Linda said with a wink.

“How’s your article?” Iris asked. She was hoping Linda would say they found some undeniable proof on senator Elm and all the money he was undoubtedly laundering but instead she answered;

“It’s coming along. Scott is being an ass like he always is, saying I’m being too nice, that I need to be more assertive. I just can’t put something on an affirmative if I don’t have proof about it.”

“Screw him.”

And after telling Iris _no, thank you I would rather not to,_ Linda proceeded to tell her how she had found some interesting documentation about the rehab clinic Elm was building, saying loads of public money went into it already and that there were just two guys working in the construction, which meant it was surely one of the embezzlement outlets.

“There was an article about the beginning of the construction,” Linda told her, “we can do a follow-up. Like write about the basic _this many months_ , _this much money_ , _and nothing has been done_ kind of shit. But I feel like we’re working on probability and guess here.”

And that was good, Iris supposed, something concrete to put on their article, but…

“If Brown would just slip Elm’s name, we would be done.”

“What about you?” Linda asked after agreeing with her.

“I have the article about Casey’s death practically written in my head. Barry found Brown on the metro’s security footage so there’s the proof we needed, but we can’t know exactly what Casey found out, you know, and I still have to actually sit down and write it.”

“I can help you,” Linda offered;

“We should publish that for tomorrow,” she added, verbalising Iris’s idea.

“Yeah, and then follow up with the whole Elm thing on Sunday.”

Linda nodded as the door to the kitchen opened. Barry this time. He stuck his head in and said with a tentative voice;

“Hey, can I come in?”

And Iris liked that he asked. She hadn’t met many guys in life who would ask instead of assume, instead of just taking, and it was a small big, big, thing. So she smiled at him and said in soft voice that surprised herself;

“Yeah, come in.”

After he had permission, Barry stepped to her side, and one of his hands traveled down her arm, grabbing a little, his long finger splaying out, and then intertwining on her own. Iris noticed she was already leaning into him as he apologised for interrupting Linda and her, saying he was feeling out of place in the living room and asking her if she was ok.

“Yeah,” she said, because that was Barry’s effect on her. She couldn’t help the little smile; “we should be writing though, I feel like this whole CCPD thing is stalling us.”

Linda watched them with attentive eyes and after a little smile of her own, she said;

“Mason was already red when we left, so I gotta a feeling his anger is on the rise, I should go manage that.”

Once they were alone, Barry pulled Iris closer and she suspected he must have been feeling uneasy himself so after breathing a bit into his chest she checked;

“Are you ok?”

He nodded, brushing her hair behind her ears and Iris liked the way he did that, telling her;

“I wish there was something concrete I could do, you know, but I’m just here waiting.”

“Well, for the record, I’m glad you’re here waiting.”

She cradled his face in her hands and marvelled on how easy he was: his lids fluttered shut in a matter of seconds and his lips were already parted in the expectation of a kiss, when her phone beeped, breaking the moment right when their noses touched. Iris pulled away a little, disappointed in whoever was messaging her as Barry questioned;

“Who is it?”

“Eddie.” Iris was impressed with him, since he finally recognised she was right, finally on her team again; “Brown dropped senator Elm’s name.”

And Barry smiled brightly at her, confirmation that they could share whatever they would conquer, as Patty opened the door to inform them;

“Hey, guys, we have legal evidence on Elms. David is gonna ask for a request for provisional arrest, so we should go after him today.”

And it made sense for Barry to go with them. Iris wanted for him to be the one looking for evidence in Elm’s office and home, and at the same time, she wanted him there, safe and within arm’s reach.

He kissed her forehead before leaving, promising her;

“I’ll keep you updated.”

“Be careful, please.”

* * *

 

Iris let out another annoyed _puff._ Barry knew she was getting worked up over it but getting her to turn off the TV was proving to be more challenging than he was expecting.

“Are you gonna help me?” he asked her, not only because he wanted to distract her from the news of senator Elm’s trial, _now live on CCPN_ ’s channel, but also because he genuinely needed help if he was ever going to finish setting their dinner table up.

“Ugh! I can’t believe this!” Iris said in complete disregard for his question; “ _I can only hope the people see the truth behind this”,_ she added on a forceful deep voice, mimicking Elm’s tone.  

“I hope they see it too, you asshole!”, she continued, talking to the TV; “I hope they see the corrupted asshole you are! Blaming Smith —”

“She was the head of the operation, Iris. You are the one who figured that out.” Barry argued. And who would have thought, who would have guessed or intuited (Iris apparently) that it wasn’t the lawyer covering her client’s tracks, it was actually a guy using his position of power to help out an unsuspected crime lord.

Iris hated whenever he called Smith a “crime lord”, which was half of the fun in calling her so, but at the moment Iris was already too upset to be mocked.

“I know, I know!” she said; “I can’t believe she got away though!”

And there was a year already, Brown’s trial was already behind them and now Elm’s was the one being judged and Barry liked to remind Iris it was still a victory. Two guilty people behind bars, that she gave Casey’s family some comfort, that they gave Casey herself some justice by catching her killer...but every now and again, Iris liked to torture herself about the fact that Smith got away, no trace of her left on the face of the Earth.  

Barry stepped into the living room area, pulling Iris up from the sofa, holding her by the hands and blocking her view of the TV. After a soft kiss on the tip of her nose, he begged her;

“Babe, you’ve got to let go.”

“Never!” she informed him and then followed it by an indignant _Hey!_ when he turned the TV off.

“Stop torturing yourself and come help me put this table together,” he instructed her.

They had just moved into their new house. It wasn’t big, but it was theirs - well partially theirs, since they had about 15 years of paying for it scheduled, so technically not fully theirs.

But it was theirs. They had picked it together and painted it together (well, he had done most of the actual painting and Iris had distracted him a whole lot by being cute), and they were in the process of choosing the furniture and Barry was surprisingly enjoying it, and how it was nice to share it all, and how it felt like _home_ , more than anywhere else he had ever lived in, even his parent’s house, even her old apartment, which they shared for a while before deciding to make everything official.

“I told you we should have asked for my dad and Wally’s help,” Iris told him, and yeah she did say that several times when the box with all the parts of their dinner table arrived and he informed her he would open it on Saturday. Perhaps she had been so insistent because putting the bar together had already been a nightmare, resulting in a heated discussion while she held a philips’ head threateningly. But Barry was not about to admit to Joe he couldn’t handle it.

“Your dad already thinks I’m not husband-material,” he argued and it wasn’t completely true, Joe had warmed up to him a little during the last year, but still, Barry could tell that whenever Joe looked at him he didn’t see the guy he would ever pick for his daughter.

Barry understood partially everybody’s resistance. They all thought it was rushed, and it may have seemed like that, looking in from outside. They hadn’t been a couple all that long when he and Iris decided to move in together in the first place. It took a month for his former apartment to be ready after the fire and, by then, Barry was so used to getting home and having Iris there that he lasted about another month until he confessed to Iris he wanted to permanently live together.

He noticed in those two first months that sometimes she would shield herself off. She would be fine and sweet and tender and affectionate, and suddenly she would get stiff like she was purposely watching herself to not act instinctively around him..

Then he told her he was in love with her, and that he wanted to move in together and be with her for all his life and she cried and nodded her agreement. And when they were in bed that day, she asked him if he was scared. Of them. She added that he was braver than her if he really wasn’t. That’s when Barry understood all the times Iris would close off, and he tried promising her she could always trust he loved her, loves her, would love her, and from there, things got easier.

It wasn’t so easy for their parents to understand though; why they would move in together when they were dating for two months, why they would get engaged if they had only been together for 6 months, why they would buy a house together _before_ getting married, but he figured by now they were accepting it. They were accepting that they were in each other’s lives, and in all of their lives, for good, no turning back. But still, Joe did not need any additional ammunition on Barry;

“If I suddenly can’t put a table together —”

“You can’t put a table together,” Iris pointed out with a laugh, grabbing the instructions that might as well be written in another language, and Barry was thankful for the sound even if it was at his expense.

“Yeah, but he doesn’t need to know that. At least wait till we’re actually married to tell him.”

Two months to go now and he was proud to admit he was doing a countdown.

Iris kept telling Barry that nothing would really actually change excepted for the fact that he would _finally, finally_ wear a ring as well (she really hated that she got to wear a ring while he didn’t) and he knew there was some truth to it, but he was still excited to be her husband, for her to actually be his wife. And he knew she was as well, she just liked being though.

“And how many days do I have to wait?” she questioned mockingly.

“53,” Barry answered her promptly and Iris shook her head but instructed;

“And then you better never take that damn ring off.”

He pulled her close, sliding his hands down her spine to rest them on her butt. He smiled before giving her a kiss.

Like he ever would.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok, that's it for this story! Thank you for everyone that followed it and comment and left kudos and supported it in any way, I really appreciate it!!  
> Especial thanks for withaflashoflove for betaing this last chapter and for the suggestions, it really helped a lot, and for Ishipit for helping me through out this story when I was kinda lost <3

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on my tumblr iriswestthings
> 
> I have very big ambitions about this, and they are basically all about Iris being a journalist and Barry being completely and stupefied-ly in love with her. Comments are always welcomed!


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